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National business newspaper Portafolio recently interviewed National Environmental Licensing Agency head Rodrigo Negrete to understand his plans for the institution. He talked about having more rigor, decentralizing and alluded to formally including community feedback in the licensing process.

Via a press release GeoPark announced a biodiversity training program in partnership with Colombia’s Biodiversity Information System (SiB Colombia), the CNAB water and biodiversity center of National Entrepreneurs’ Association ANDI and the Global Biodiversity Information Infrastructure (GBIF): The Corporate Management for Nature: Training Path to Biodiversity Data Mobility.

The first alarms were at 4:15am Wednesday, December 21, from the port area of Compas, first a fire and then explosions. Several firepersons were injured and one was killed. The storage facilities of Bravo Petroleum are affected.

One of the key questions underlying the debate about the oil and gas industry in Colombia concerns when demand will peak and so for how long can public finances count on the flow of exports and tax revenues. Gustavo Petro’s “Illuminati” believe we all should stop using fossil fuels today and stop producing the stuff. More pragmatic observers think it too soon to (as some headlines put it) kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Recently the International Energy Agency (IEA) weighed in with its view, based on various climate change scenarios.

Many of the world’s largest countries are backtracking, or slowing down, on some of their plans to move away from fossil fuels. The Colombian government thinks differently.

Danish environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg spoke about global warming scenarios and the decarbonization process.

Among MinEnergia Irene Vélez’s many ‘faux pas’ is telling the Colombian Mining Association’s annual conference that developed countries should shrink their economies to reduce the load on the environment. This would also allow her and her cabinet colleagues to reduce the extractive sector – guilt free – because there would be less consumption.

We spoke to Maria Lara Estrada of LATAM Airlines Colombia and she told us that the secret to cleaner aviation is all in the process. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is the airline industry’s solution to lowering air travel emissions. (This was published last week in our sister publication ePower Colombia. We know that many of you read both but we thought this article was important to be in the two databases, for those that do not subscribe to both and for future searches.)

Juan Pablo Ruiz is my favorite Colombian environmentalist because he is completely rational, completely pragmatic without losing one bit of his passion and commitment. Recently, he wrote a pair of columns directed at Colombia’s future president that touched on the strategy of reducing demand or supply of fossil fuels. I might have written them or at least something like them.

The National Environmental Licensing Agency (ANLA) presented the development of new technologies and instruments designed for environmental licensing in Colombia.